Wooden Doors
by Josy
Summary: In which the white witch isn't quite as dead as people would like to think. Based in the Narnia created by francienyc and rootyboots. Dark, with PeridanEdmund slash


_A/N: This story takes place in the Narnia created by francienyc and rooty-boots. They've built an entire lifetime for the Pevensies that takes place during the Golden Age and I'm cheerfully barging into it. To learn more about Peridan, read francienyc's story 'The Artist's Tale'._

Once upon a time, Lucy didn't need to knock on her sister's door to enter. Once upon a time, the heavy wooden doors had been beautiful decorations, art really, but nothing more. Now, she reflected, letting her fingertips gently trace the carved images, the panels were just another set of walls locking her out. If only they were all made of wood, she thought sadly. I'd break them down, heavy or not.

Squaring her shoulders, she rapped her knuckles against the wood. To her surprise, it quietly slid open without protest. Considering it a fortunate sign, Lucy strode into Susan's quarters, calling loudly.

"Susan! Susan, are you here? Everyone said you hadn't come down to breakfast yet, so I figured you were here. You'll never guess what happened, it was the funniest thing I've ever seen in Narnia. Well, second funniest, I guess, because nothing could top the time the spider followed Ed around. Susan? And I need your advice on something," she said, looking around.

Having glanced around the rest of the rooms with no luck, Lucy paused at the closed door to the bathroom, weighing her options, before making a decision.

She spoke loudly at the door, "All right, Susan, I really need to talk to you so I'm coming in, but my eyes are closed, I promise."

True to her word, she kept her eyes tightly shut as she entered the room, feeling the temperature difference in the muggy room. "Oh, Susan, a hot bath's a great idea, your rooms are always so much colder than ours. How's the cough? Are you feeling better?"

Hearing only silence, Lucy, wondering if her sister was under water or had fallen asleep, turned around and opened her eyes.

Red. Her breath left her body as all she could see was the red slowly leaking out of her arm, the arm propped lifelessly on the rim of the marble basin and she couldn't, wouldn't believe that it was blood, that it was Susan's blood. Time stopped. She stared, uncomprehending, until her heart pounded. It beat, hard, forcefully pulsing her through the seconds until she was running to Susan's side. She heard a screaming, an unearthly wail that caused the hairs on her arms to rise until she realized that the sound was coming from her, an unbroken wave of sound continuing to call for her brothers as she held towels to her sister's arms, squeezing, pressing the cloth to the skin as tight as she could.

Her voice broke, hoarse, and she was forced to stop screaming and take a breath as she struggled to move the still, blood slick body out of the bath. As her arms entered the red water she looked to the surface of the liquid and began to shriek again, higher pitched as she staggered to the brink of madness and stared into the face of the cold witch that was never supposed to be able to steal any of her family ever again.

"We already beat you!" Lucy screamed at the image on the water. "You can't be here, we won! We won! You weren't supposed to come back!" The image began laughing, high pitched, as Lucy stumbled backwards, holding tight to her sister.

"Please, Susan, please, come back, I'm sorry, come back," she sobbed, holding the towels as tightly as she could to her sister's wrists. "I thought we were safe, I thought she was gone, I didn't know, I'm sorry, I'll protect you, please, please just come back.

"Come back," repeated a voice, but it was wrong, it was deeper, throatier, all wrong. "Come back," it said again, and he felt a strong hand on his shoulder, forcing him into awareness until-

His eyes flew open and he sat up in bed, panicked, hardly breathing, tears streaming from his eyes. He couldn't stop shaking and, trying to get up off the bed to go check on her he was surprised to feel a strong hand grab hold of his wrist and hold him back. He turned around, and, seeing Edmund's steady gaze he finally began to calm down. With each breath he forced from his lungs the memory of her lifeless body eased from his mind until the shaking stopped and he could safely believe that he was back in his bed, that she was safe, that she was alive.

"Oh my god," breathed Peridan, hand covering his eyes warily. "Ed…"

Edmund put his arms around Peridan and gently pulled him back until they were laying down, Peridan's head resting on his shoulder. "It's Ok," he said softly, voice still hoarse with sleep. "You're ok. Just a dream. What happened?"

He wanted to tell but he couldn't, couldn't share the image of Susan's lifeless corpse with her brother, couldn't share the memory of his seeing the White Witch.

Instead, he pulled back and, propping himself up on one elbow, asked "Ed, should we be more worried about Susan?"

Confusion in his dark eyes, Edmund frowned and asked, honestly, "Do you think that's possible?"

"I'm scared, Edmund. I'm scared she won't be able to take anything else. She's meant for beauty and love and all she seems to find is abuse and rejection and death. I'm worried she won't be able to handle much more."

Frown deepening, Edmund asked warily, "Peridan, what happened to her in your dream?"

Ignoring the question, Peridan continued, " We're loosing her, bit by bit, day by day, and something has to happen soon or we're going to loose her for good. And we can't let that happen. We can't, I won't, we need to go talk to her, we need to talk to her right now, she has to know we're here," he said, rolling on his side to reach the edge of the bed and swing his legs over.

Before he could, though, Ed had grabbed him again and pulled him back, forcefully, wrapping an arm around Peridan's waist and holding him close. Breath tickling in Peridan's ear, he said sadly, "I'm scared, too. But there's nothing more we can do. She knows we're here. We're watching her closely. We're doing everything we can."

"But it isn't enough," Peridan spoke into the empty space before him, letting Edmund's quiet, steady breathing calm him as it always did.

"But it's all we can do," Peridan both felt and heard him say. "She'll come back to us when she's ready."

"And until then? What if she doesn't?"

There was quiet, for a moment, until, taking Peridan's hand in his own and pressing both to Peridan's chest, Edmund said, "That's between her and Aslan."

"But-"

"We've done all we can," repeated Edmund, "The rest is between the two of them."

Unable to think of a response, Peridan brought Edmunds hand, still intertwined with his own, up to his lips and kissed it gently before moving backwards, closer to his lover. After lying together quietly for a few minutes, eyelids slowly growing heavier, he drowsily heard Ed's voice rumbling in his ear.

"You can go back to sleep," he said. "I'll wake you if I think you're dreaming again."

Safe in this assurance, Peridan slowly drifted off to sleep as Susan, soul still healing the bruises and the fractures that had long survived her husband's death, sobbed, hopeless and alone behind her thick wooden doors.


End file.
